Slack Tide

“A doctor told me once, I feel too much. I said so does God, that’s why you can see the Grand Canyon from the moon,” Andrea Gibson from Jellyfish

—-

When I was a girl, we’d camp by the ocean
and once, I waded into the water, cutting my foot
on a shell. From that moment, I was a
mermaid. My blood leaked into salt water,
salt water leaked into my blood. We were blood
brothers, but sisters too and lovers, souls
connected the way ragweed grasped light.
Men looked at me in tight suits. When I didn’t look back
men would say: smile girl, don’t you talk?
Pretty girls eye fuck
pretty girls open their mouths
Pretty girls with nothing to say
talk too much.
If they only knew how loud the world sounded;
how loud the waves; the voices; the sand
breaking under my feet; the pleads
men like them would never gasp aloud.
I ran through slack tide, the salt
burning my crescent cut –
a drug plunging a track mark